Magnetism

  The hose is coiled tightly. Only the gardener uses it. It takes the two of us to un-stretch it to the middle of the yard, and then, from the garage, I get the thing with all the holes that makes the water swish in an arc over back and forth like a jumping rope, and we connect it. But when I turn the tap the water doesn’t come out at all because there’s a twist in the hose. Carmela flips this to straighten it and the water suddenly bursts out of the end. She’s drenched and her sneakers are soaked, and then she’s mad. She shrieks at me to stop it. ‘Fuck it! Turn it off.’

  I turn it off as quick as I can, but the sound of dripping water continues as the arc dies down and fizzles out. Her long black hair is now stuck to her face and chest like a piece of wet cloth. She stamps her foot, like a two-year-old. ‘Look at me. Jesus.’ She steps backwards and stumbles. She ends up on her butt sitting at the edge of the flower bed. She’s squashed a whole bunch of flowers. ‘You did it on purpose.’

  ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘Get me a towel or something.’

  ‘No.’ I just want her to go more than anything, ever. ‘I can’t. I don’t want to. You’d better just go home.’ I can feel the headache growing like the start of the drop on the big rollercoaster at Six Flags. I push my hand against my forehead trying to stop it coming. I feel nauseous.

  She stands up and brushes off her legs with her hands.

  What will it take to get her to go? I imagine using the hose to hose her right out of my life. Down the drain. I swap hands on my head and point at the smashed-up flowers. The pink and red colours are garish and grotesque as they appear and disappear. ‘You’d better just go home,’ I repeat. ‘Go home. I’m going to be sick,’ I say. I go over to the flower bed and try to throw up.

  ‘You are so gross. You’re so, so weird,’ she repeats. ‘I’m outta here.’

  When Carmela has gone, I head straight back into the cool of the house. The air-conditioning is soothing. I lie down on my back in the den. I lie perfectly still and feel the ache behind my right eye slide out and fill my vision like Fantasia. In the dark, lying down, my head doesn’t hurt so much. The jagged colours swarm, collide, dance and stab at me behind my right eye; I have never imagined such beautifully clear colours. They are now vibrant pink and yellow and blue, all of them in triangles and tiny squares. They mix and spread in my head like melting Crayola between pieces of tracing paper when you’ve applied an iron.

  I don’t know how much time passes before Mom comes home. I hear the shopping bags come into the room. I cannot open my eyes. ‘What are you doing in here?’ she asks.

  ‘Headache and colours. The colours hurt.’

  She gets me some aspirin and sits down next to me and strokes my feet until I go to sleep.

  The next day, Mom arranges a physical with Dr Freddy. Dr Freddy is a children’s doctor and at his office there is a whole wall full of pictures of sick kids that he has helped. There are so many that they overlap now and I feel sorry for the kids underneath that are buried under other, newer kids. Even some of the pictures that are on top – in the corners especially – look old and faded. Those kids might be all grown-up now, maybe with kids of their own who they take to another doctor, or they’ve moved out of state. And some of them, the Polaroids, aren’t old, but are fading anyway. The kids are disappearing. Mom said that she would give Dr Freddy’s office a picture of me to go up, but she never got round to it – so I am not sitting there with big bug eyes and gangly arms looking down on the other kids in the waiting room.

  Some of the kids on the wall, though, are not alive any more. The receptionist puts a tiny yellow halo on the picture if any of the kids die. I watched her do it once when we were here. I guess their moms and dads aren’t going to call in here again to complain and ask for the picture of the sick kid back, are they? You can see a few yellow halos sticking out from the deepest pictures.

  It’s busy today. When we finally get called through, I have to take off my clothes down to my underpants to wait. The nurse puts a thermometer in my mouth and then she weighs and measures me. She pokes me in the stomach with her cold finger. ‘My, my,’ she says as she pulls out the thermometer with her other hand and looks at it. ‘You are growing up.’ She says this like she knows me, but I’m sure she wasn’t here last time we came.

  Dr Freddy is bald with thick glasses. His white coat has his name in cursive embroidery over his top pocket. Red letters. It’s not his real name, which is long and unfriendly. It says his kiddy doctor name: Dr Freddy. Since last time we were here, last year, someone has embroidered a yellow happy face after his name. Dr Freddy himself does smile a lot.

  ‘So, you just graduated sixth grade, huh?’ he says to me.

  ‘Yes, sir,’

  ‘My little baby all grown up,’ Mom says. ‘Seventh grade in September.’

  ‘So, any problems?’ he asks. His eyes are big through his glasses and sort of watery, like a creature who spends a lot of time in water, but not underwater particularly, maybe a hippopotamus.

  ‘Headaches. I get migraine. I think she’s getting migraine.’

  ‘And stomach aches,’ I add.

  ‘Periods?’

  I’m not sure who he’s asking so I wait for Mom to answer.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Not yet,’ I repeat because I guess I could have spoken up. Maybe I should have answered. I don’t want him to think I don’t know what a period is. I try to sound both disappointed and hopeful but, instead, my voice sounds stupid and squeaky.

  ‘Well, I’d guess they’re right around the corner. But there’s time … for these things,’ he says. ‘Have you got any friends?’

  ‘I guess,’ I say. I think of Carmela who is my best friend. I think I am her best friend too.

  ‘She’s got a couple of friends,’ Mom says.

  ‘Okay, then.’ He takes the stethoscope that’s over his shoulders and puts the ends in his ears and the other bit on to my chest. ‘Breathe in … Breathe out … Again … ’ Then he feels my neck and under my jaw with his fingers. His hands feel warm and soothing. He pats me on the top of the head and tells me to stand up. I have to stand on my tiptoes, then on one leg, then the other. Then he suddenly pulls my underpants away from my stomach and peers down them. Just as quickly, he snaps them back.

  Back on the examination couch again, I lie down and he prods my stomach and asks if it hurts. It doesn’t. He asks Mom if I go to the bathroom regularly, and me if I have any problems when I urinate. She says yes, I say no.

  Now I sit up and he tells me to pass my glasses to Mom. ‘Watch my finger,’ he says. He leans in close and moves his forefinger from side to side, then to his nose and over to mine. It makes me cross-eyed and he grins.

  ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Your periods will start pretty soon. Migraine onset now is typical.’ He points. ‘Your chest is sprouting. You’ll need a bra very soon; maybe get one before you start back to school … There are other signs. He points now to my underpants, to my new pubic hair. ‘Aspirin for the headaches, and rest. Dark rooms. Do well in school. Plenty of time to make lots of friends,’ he says to me. ‘Take her shopping,’ he says to Mom. ‘Get things ready.’

  It’s the end of the summer now and we are at Carmela’s house for a meal. The house is big, and dark. Lots of dark wood panelling. Rugs, not carpets. You can hear footsteps but don’t know where they’re coming from. Mrs Marino seems okay. She yells a lot, everywhere, but not at me, and she also smiles a lot. Today she said she likes my hair. It’s taken ages to grow out, but I’m pleased with how it is now. It’s nearly to my shoulders and I got bangs cut in yesterday, all ready for school, which begins next week.

  I’ve also got new shoes, two new skirts, four new turtlenecks and two bras. I think about the first day, Monday, almost every morning: if this was day one, what would I wear? What if I get my period at school?

  The school board is set to discuss whether or not girls can wear pants. Maybe even jeans. In the winter, last year, some of the girls wore them un
der their dresses and skirts and left them on when they got to school and no one said anything. Mom says that’s because the stupid rule is that girls must wear skirts or dresses, not that they can’t wear anything else as well. The jeans under the dresses looked dumb, but I bet the girls wearing them were warmer when it got real cold outside. Mom told Dad she wants to get involved and make a stand. She’s going along to the PTA to say something. I’m not sure how I feel about that. She probably won’t remember anyway.

  It’s nearly seven o’clock. The table is not set, but Carmela tells me to sit down. She says dinner will be coming out soon. Her mom is in the kitchen clanking around cooking. But when I go to sit on the first chair, she says, ‘No, not there. That’s Tony’s seat.’ The next one along is Joey’s, and Frank’s and Marco’s. Her seat is around the other side. In the end Carmela pulls up another chair for me and squeezes it between where Tony and Joey will be sitting.

  I realise I want to use the bathroom but, now that I’m sitting down, I’m too embarrassed to ask where that is.

  When Mrs Marino comes in, her face is wet – either with perspiration or steam. Through the open door it looks like the whole kitchen is full of fog. She’s carrying a large bowl full of plain noodles, some of them are dribbling over the edges. ‘Sauce, Carmela,’ she says, and Carmela jumps up and goes to get it. She brings another big bowl and a ladle to the table.

  Using some special utensil I’ve never seen before, Carmela’s mother puts scoops of spaghetti on to plates as the family arrive. Then on to each plate she ladles the meat sauce. She hands out the plates like the cafeteria ladies at school. No one except me says thank you. ‘I love spaghetti,’ I say.

  ‘It’s vermicelli,’ Carmela says.

  Carmela’s brothers are all older than her. They appear big and nearly men – with lots of black hair and tanned faces. I think they all look like Joe Namath, another one of Carmela’s crushes. I wonder if Carmela has thought about that, but that would be gross. I won’t mention it.

  Neither Tony nor Joey acknowledges me even though my chair is between them. They have to put a leg over their respective seats and wedge themselves in. Either side of me male elbows encroach on my space. No one eats despite the steaming full plates.

  Then Carmela’s father strides in. I’ve never seen him before. Mr Marino sits at the head of the table and everyone copies as he puts his hands together to pray. Except me, of course. I’ve never done that.

  Unfortunately he notices. ‘What are you?’ he says to me, then to Carmela. ‘Some fucking atheist you’ve brought home?’

  I freeze. I think we are Episcopalian.

  ‘Leave the girl alone! Can’t you see your sons are hungry,’ Mrs Marino shouts at him.

  ‘Don’t you tell me what to do.’ He stands up to yell back at her with his knuckles on the table like the gorilla at the zoo.

  Carmela’s mother says, ‘Sit down; you’re frightening her. She comes from a civilised family.’

  I don’t know what to do. To be polite, I shake my head to deny that my family is any more civilised than this one, but what I am thinking is exactly the opposite.

  Now Mr Marino speaks directly to me. ‘For your information, my wife,’ he says, ‘is a very religious woman and she successfully imposes it upon all of us.’ He clasps his hands again and everyone falls silent. Tony nudges me and I copy the others.

  ‘Heavenly father, Lord Jesus, Blessed mother of God and all the angels in Heaven, and all the saints in heaven … ’ he starts. I imagine a crowd of winged creatures looking down on us around the table, as if we were specimens under a glass dome. But just as soon as he’s begun he’s finishing. He says, ‘Anyway, bless us as we eat this food today,’ and everyone picks up forks and spoons.

  There is the sound of slurping all around the table. I try to catch a piece of the stringy pasta using my fork, but it keeps sliding off. I watch Carmela, opposite me, suck up the strips dangling from her closed mouth. A trail of sauce is on her chin. Her brother next to me twirls his fork against his spoon until it makes a manageable glob and then he sticks it in his mouth.

  I’m not hungry. I really wish I were at home.

  ‘So, tell us about yourself, mysterious atheist.’ Carmela’s dad pours himself a huge glass of red wine from the bottle on the table.

  ‘I said leave the girl alone,’ Mrs Marino says.

  ‘Have you got something to hide? Crackpot politics perhaps? Women’s Lib? Where did your parents stand on Amendment 26? Important decision. Will you be ready to vote in seven years?’ He rattles out the questions at me without break. I have no idea how to answer but I reckon I should be able to learn how to use a voting machine when my time comes to vote so I tilt my head slightly and thoughtfully and then I nod, just a bit.

  ‘This kind of stuff will ruin America. Watch my words.’ He taps his forehead with the back of his fork, leaving bits of spaghetti sauce scattered around his face which he wipes off with the table napkin.

  When she clears the plates Mrs Marino is kind enough not to point out that I’ve hardly eaten any of the pasta. It’s all rubbery and stuck together in one glutinous mass, with the greasy sauce glistening away on top. Everyone else’s plate is empty. ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘It was a very nice meal. Delicious.’

  School starts and, not only does Mom want to get involved in the pants versus skirts debate, she wants to run for the PTA. I don’t want my mom within a million miles of my school but she says she needs to do this. She doesn’t care if she’s the president or the treasurer, she wants to get right in there and be involved because we can’t always sit on the sidelines with everything. Dad said he’d rather she be involved with getting the house straight and making a decent meal, but she told him that if he acted more like a man, maybe she’d act more like a woman. We are both going to the Start of School Year meeting. She will put her hand up and find out if anyone seconds her and then there will be a vote.

  When she comes downstairs, at first I am relieved. At least she’s not wearing that red pantsuit. She thinks she should dress like Mary Tyler Moore, but Mom is short and a size 12. But then I realise that things are not good. She’s not wearing a bra. Her breasts are too big and are just hanging there, obviously braless. I can’t exactly see her nipples through the material, but I don’t want to look too hard because then I probably will and, if I can, other people will be able to as well. I notice that the plaid skirt she’s wearing is way too short for anyone over thirty. Her legs are like carrots. She has thin ankles and broad round thighs, which are dimply at the back, and when we get in the car I notice that she’s forgotten to do her make-up. Her face without makeup looks so ordinary and – I don’t know – poor, I guess.

  She drives too slowly, in silence, which means she’s mad.

  If we’re late, everyone will see us come in, but I can’t say anything because when she’s in this kind of mood it’s best to just sit quietly and wait until it goes away. Sometimes, though, she can be jollied out of it if I show some interest in her. So I ask, in a normal voice, ‘How was your women’s group?’

  ‘Interesting,’ she replies, sounding suspicious. ‘Very interesting.’ And then she goes quiet again. We’re now going slower – we’re doing twenty miles an hour. There’s a line of cars forming behind us.

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘Consciousness-raising.’

  ‘Is it all Women’s Lib or do you do any beauty stuff, or Tupperware? Avon?’

  ‘Avon?’ It’s as if I’ve asked if they crap on the floor. ‘No, we don’t do Avon.’

  ‘Paint Me Wonderful? Carmela’s mom was telling me about that. She says she thinks my best colours would be indigo and moss.’

  ‘Moss, huh?’ Mom says. ‘Green looks shit on everyone.’ Only two months ago, she wouldn’t have said anything like that.

  ‘Is there a lot of cussing in the group?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So, do you talk about your husbands? Or books?’

  ‘Sometimes books
.’

  ‘Can I come?’

  The traffic light ahead is green and we could get through, but we’re going so slow, by the time we approach it it’s turned orange and then red. She stops. ‘No.’

  For a moment I think she’s going to just come out and say it: that her life with this group, the stuff she does now, is more important than us. She spends more time with other women raising themselves than being at home changing the sheets every third day (which she used to do, and which was my best smell and sensation in the world – clean fresh starched sheets – and which we have no more). Now our home is dusty and the bedclothes all warm and crinkled and Dad is right, we never get a decent meal any more. It’s all TV dinners since she decided to liberate herself – from what, I’d like to know? She hasn’t exactly been in prison.

  I think she might as well just come out and own up to the fact that she doesn’t want to be my mom any more, or Dad’s wife, but she doesn’t say this. She says, in a very calm voice, ‘Today I looked at my own cervix. We all did. It’s in the vagina. At the top.’

  She is still not looking at me and I don’t look at her, either. We’re both looking at the red light.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, because what can you say to that? That this sounds like a good thing, for a bunch of moms to sit around looking at their own private parts? I think about how they would do that, but don’t say anything.

  ‘We used doctors’ instruments and mirrors. Our bodies are nothing to be ashamed of.’

  I don’t want to think ‘why’ in case she tells me that she’s turned into a lesbian. All her friends that I’ve met, looking up their insides, together. Mrs Brown, Diane’s mother, goes to that group. Why can’t Mom stick to the yoga? I try to think about yoga. Yoga. Yoga. I turn to look out the window. Yoga.

  The fact is that my crazy mom wants to march into my school and ruin my life. I’ve got to do something. I grab my head, then clasp my stomach. ‘My stomach hurts, Mom. I’m going to chuck.’ And it works. Because I’m feeling sick, she lets me wait in the car when we get to school. This means I don’t have to watch what happens with the election.